Has there ever been a good poem written by a woman?

Just to go with Thomas idea, you cannot guess a male or female from the writing.

Wrong again: Robert Frost,1915.

And the third one:

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

Woot! I knew that one from the style... 10th grade English class FTW!

Well. I'm gonna say female. But You've totally answered my question in any case. My knowledge of female poetry was obviously shamefully scant.

However, given a larger number of samples, I don't think people can do much better than, say, 52%...

This one you got right:

Much Madness, Emily Dickinson.

Luck mostly I guess. I went with the fact that I thought the meter was a bit messy.

Still. Good empirical destruction of my hypothesis. Well done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Tf2lQvDz0

See if you can find the song, "One out of three's piss poor".

Thanks for being a good sport about having your theory shot down by experiment.

2 out of three etc was as close as i could get. sorry.
I did try though
hows this one
http://able2know.org/topic/110042-567#post-3718997

An untitled poem by Mary Oliver

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body's world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is --

so it enters us --
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

Morning Poem

by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy.

Mindful

by Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Page 72 / mister arty martyr

by Harryette Mullen

mister arty martyr
a jackass to water
changing partners in
the middle of a scream

bereft of flavor
for lack of endeavor
he chooses a heifer
and loses forever

delirious boozer
he smoothes her sutures
removes a moocher
from her future

a thing of shreds and patches
hideous scarecrow she
puts teeth in any nightmare
of the man who sleeps with matches